Commentary: Omnipresent omni-channel

CSCMP discussion and sessions focus intently on omni-channel, but supply chain leaders need more data.    There really is no escaping the effect that omni-channel retailing is having on the supply chain industry.
   That much was evident at this year’s Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals annual conference in San Antonio. This show is a colossus, both in terms of the number of sessions on offer, and the number of practitioners attending.
   Yet conversations and sessions kept returning back to the dynamic of omni-channel (with one track focused solely on the subject). In a pure transportation sense, omni-channel presents its own interesting effects, but this is a term that is more relevant to broader supply chain areas like distribution, warehousing, inventory and replenishment, all the way down to customer relationship management.
   I spoke with a number of attendees about what they were noticing during the conference, and the feeling from them was that the next stage of information maturity in omni-channel was more hard data. Most companies have dived headlong into omni-channel distribution merely because they had no other choice but to embrace it. Avoiding direct-to-consumer channels, or options like online buy/store returns, is not an option — these retailers would be conspicuous by their absence if they didn’t serve the customer as the customer wants to be served.
   But these initiatives aimed at building omni-channel capability largely came without the data that typically underlies such important strategic supply chain decisions. Now supply chain practitioners — including retailers and the logistics services providers that aid them — need better data about what works and what doesn’t.
   Should struggling retailers turn their creaking brick-and-mortar outlets in slow foot traffic locations into de facto distribution centers? Should they turn to other retailers with limited or no brick-and-mortar presence to jointly use those facilities? Or should they just cut bait? These are distribution/inventory/fulfillment decisions that have obvious downstream impacts on transportation. Or it’s better to say that there will obviously be an impact on transportation, even if the impact is not so obvious.
   What’s clear is that transportation managers at retailers now have to account for many more variables in their procurement of domestic transportation services. And it’s not just outbound logistics. Product has to flow through international transportation channels to DCs in such a way that it makes sense with fulfillment needs. Every domino touches the one in front of it.
   But the industry needs more data. Decisions are based on accurate data. Systems rely on accurate data. That’s the next step.